Subreddit lets AI publish fake news about WoW character ‘Glorbo’

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Users of the World of Warcraft subreddit have managed to fool a gaming news site that has at least some of its content written by an AI. The site published a completely made-up story about the introduction of the non-existent WoW character ‘Glorbo’.

It started with one post on the WoW subreddit from a user who was pretty sure that website zleague.gg was manufacturing its articles this way. He or she was convinced that if a sandwich monkey story were discussed enthusiastically and seriously enough on the subreddit, the site would take over unironically. That has apparently happened before, including quotes from Reddit users.

That specific topic was not taken over by zlgeaue.gg, but one another post with the same intention well. It speaks jubilantly about the introduction of Glorbo, with all kinds of invented details surrounding it.

Many of those details ended up in the article. Zleague says that players are ‘excited’, but that ‘the mandatory Klikclac item and its effect on more casual players does raise concerns’. The text “This honestly makes me so happy! I just really want a major news website run by bots to put an article about this online,” has also been neatly copied. Glorbo is also characterized as ‘the best addition since the quest to dethrone Quackion, the aspect of Ducks’.

The ‘author’, Lucy Reed, has posted more than 80 articles online today, Ars Technica pointed out. Zleague has taken the article in question offline, but the mistake is thankfully archived for everyone’s reading pleasure.

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